Tag Archives: Service Motors

2014/09/30 (T) To Indiana

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Linda was up early again and off to the bakery.  I got up just before 8 AM, showered and shaved and had a grapefruit for breakfast.  I did not have any coffee.  I do not eat or drink on lot on days when I have to drive the bus.  I checked and adjusted the tire pressures on the bus while it was still cool and cloudy.  I then hooked up the car and checked the rear lights.  I spent the rest of the morning gathering up last minute things and loading them on the bus.  My plan was to leave at noon.  There were a lot of last minute things but I was packed and ready to go by 11:45 AM.

I called Linda to let her know I was getting ready to leave, secured the house, and took care of the final departure items.  I started the car, put it in D (drive) for 20 seconds, slipped it into neutral, made sure the parking brake was off, the steering wheel was free to turn, and the Pressure Pro repeater was plugged in.  The key has to be in the ignition switch and turned to the “on” position while the car is being towed so I travel with two car keys so I can lock the car.  I turned off the shore power to the bus, disconnected the power cord, and stowed it.  I closed up the utility (shore connections) bay, checked that the air accessories circuits were open in the DS front bay, checked that the inverter was working, and made a final check that all of the bays were closed and locked.

I secured the entrance door (from the inside), checked that everything was ready for travel on the interior, buckled myself in, and started the engine.  I gave it a minute to get oil flowing through the engine and start to build air pressure and then switched it to high idle to finish airing up the suspension and brake systems.  I switched the suspension system from Level Low mode to driving mode, pulled the tag axles up, let the suspension come back up to ride height, and slowly pulled out.  (Lifting the tag tires off the ground helps the bus make slow tight turns like the 180 degree turn to pull out of our pull-through driveway and into the street pointed in the right direction to get out to the main road.)  I stopped in the street to lower the tag axles, let the suspension readjust to ride height, and was finally on my way.  (The bus is not supposed to be moving when the tag axles are raised or lowered.)  The dashboard clock turned 12:00 when I was half way down our street.  That’s the departure drill.  The morning turned out to be busier than I would have liked, but that was pretty good time management, I would say.

It had rained hard around midnight and there was a heavy cloud layer all morning with occasional mist, so it was a cool, damp morning.  I took my usual route north on Hacker Road to M-59 west to I-96 west to the southwest corner of Lansing where I picked up I-69 south.  I stayed on I-69 into Indiana where I picked up US-20 west.  I always enjoy the drive across this stretch of US-20; it’s a 2-lane highway posted at 55 MPH (except through towns) and is hilly from I-69 west to the Elkhart area.  It is not unusual to see Amish buggies along this route but they were out in force today from Lagrange to Middlebury.  There was also road construction along the way so it was a slightly trickier and slower drive than normal.

I exited US-20 onto US-31 southbound and was immediately routed onto a new section of highway.  I have seen stretches of this highway under construction on trips to Twelve Mile Indiana over the last couple of years but this was the first time I had driven on it.  The road I used to take is now “Old US-31.”  The new highway rejoined the old highway near Plymouth, Indiana.  From this point south to Kokomo US-31 has long been a four lane divided highway, but not limited access.  At the point of rejoining one side was closed with traffic routed on the other side, making a 2-lane construction zone.  In spite of that I was able to keep rolling and made good time.  I was out of the construction quickly enough.

Once the highway made the turn back to the south near Rochester I was in the home stretch.  Another 10 miles and I saw the familiar communications towers that tell me to look for the barn on the east side of the highway at SR-16.  I made the turn onto SR-16 westbound and another 7 miles brought me to the heart of downtown Twelve Mile, Indiana where Butch and Fonda’s home and business are located.  (Twelve Mile, Indiana is 12 miles from Rochester, 12 Miles from Logansport, and 12 miles from Peru, thus the name.)  I pulled into the driveway for the grain elevator across the street from their parking area, let the engine idle for a few minutes to cool down and stabilize, and shut it down while I unhooked and parked the car.

Butch and Fonda had gotten home from a day of errands and family visits just before I arrived.  They unloaded groceries while I attended to my car.  Butch then served as spotter while I backed across SR-16 into their lot and got me parked next to their bus.  As parked, the coach was level side-to-side but low in the front.  I switched the suspension to Level Low, raised the front end, and shut off the engine.

I use their spare bedroom when I am here, so I unloaded clothing and technology items and took them inside.  I left all of my food onboard the bus, however, as I prepare my own (vegan) meals and usually eat breakfast and lunch in the coach by myself (if I even have lunch).  I try to prepare dinner and bring it in the house to eat with them if the timing works out, but tonight it did not.  They had a large, late lunch and I had a small, light breakfast and a handful of pretzel nibblers and peanuts (literally) for lunch.  Linda sent a lot of food with me for such a short trip, so I had a green salad and a hummus sandwich for dinner after which I settled in to visit for the evening.  My iPad remembered how to connect to their Wi-Fi and I got my ASUS laptop connected as well.  This is the first time the laptop has been to there place and only the second time it’s been out of the house since I bought it.

It was a bit strange seeing the place somewhat emptied out although there is still a lot of stuff there.  I was surprised at what the company in Nevada did not take, but Butch and Fonda both explained that the buyer had taken the stuff they were most likely to sell, had space to store, and could afford to ship 2,000 miles to Nevada.  Some remaining items with unique value may be sold but much of the remaining inventory will be sold as scrap.  Things are a bit chaotic at the moment as they had to move a lot of stuff to get to other stuff and are now going through their stuff trying to figure out what stuff to get rid of and how to get rid of it.  They are working towards being full-timers, so they have a big task ahead of them.

 

20140911 (R) Rooted

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After a breakfast of zucchini muffins and a banana (soft foods) I tried playing with the new RVillage mobile site on my Samsung Galaxy S III phone but I was unable to log in so I read a few blog posts.  We had gusty winds overnight after the rain cleared out so I checked the weather to see what might be headed our way today.  There wasn’t any additional rain in the forecast, but it looked like we would stay shrouded from the sun all day.  The wild turkeys were not put off by the weather and spent some time foraging back by the fire pit.  There were there long enough that I was able to get my good telephoto zoom lens on the camera and get this shot from the basement walkout doorwall.

These three adults and three young have been regular visitors to our yard of late.

These three adults and three young have been regular visitors to our yard of late.

My endodontics appointment was at 11:45 AM with Root Canal Specialty Associates in Brighton, Michigan.  Their offices are on Grand River Avenue just northwest of St. Joseph Mercy Hospital.  That’s only about five miles from our house; much more convenient than driving to Dearborn.  Although I have been having discomfort in both the upper and lower rear teeth on my right side, the bad tooth turned out to be one of the uppers.  Once they had determined that it needed a root canal I never even had to get out of the chair; they just seamlessly moved from diagnostic mode to repair mode.  Endodontic operations are very efficient.

They were done and I was on my way by 1:30 PM.  I stopped at Smead & Son just up the road to see if they could fabricate a rebar cage for our ham radio tower foundation.  They can, and they also sell Sonotubes if we decide to use one.  They stock diameters up to 36″ locally, and have tubes up to 48″ diameter at their Pontiac location.  They can bend the round horizontal sections, fold over the ends of the vertical sections, and supply the twist ties for tying the pieces of rebar together.  They even sell a special tool for twisting the twist ties.  The pieces would not be welded, but the assured me that twist tying them together is the standard way that rebar is held in place.  They can also supply the threaded steel anchor bolts if I decide to get them locally.

My next stop was Staples in Brighton for a new touch screen stylus/pen.  I ended up getting a Wacom Bamboo stylus with no pen, and a Logitech Bluetooth keyboard to pair with my iPad2.  I create the rough drafts of all of my blog posts on the iPad, and I should have gotten a keyboard a long time ago.  I also picked up a sympathy card for a friend and co-worker of Linda’s whose father just passed away.

I stopped at Dunkin Donuts on the way home and got some hot apple cider but could not drink it right away as the local anesthetic had not yet worn completely off and I dribbled every time I took a sip; not a pretty sight.  Back home I took my 3 PM dose of Tylenol.  I will be taking Ibuprofen every six hours for the next 24 hours and also taking Tylenol every six hours spaced halfway in-between the Ibuprofen doses.  Between the anesthetic wearing off and the apple cider cooling down I was finally able to drink it in small careful sips.  I unpacked the wireless keyboard and got it connected to my iPad2 and used it to finishing typing this post.  The keyboard comes with a case that turns into a stand that can hold my iPad2 at two different angles in each of portrait or landscape position.  All-in-all a very nice little package.  I have generally been very happy with Logitech products over the years.

I wanted to play with the RVillage mobile development site but still could not get logged in.  On a suggestion from Linda I figured out how to tell my Samsung Galaxy S III phone to NOT remember logins for websites and was finally able to login and navigate around.  The initial login was a 2-step process and my phone was automatically providing the username and password for step 1 even though I was manually entering the information for step 2.  Once I was in I joined a test group, replied to a topic post, created a new topic and made an initial post.  I also replied to a message, searched for two members of the development team, and sent messages to each of them with some site feedback.  Based on our limited testing of the site it appears that the development team has done a great job on the mobile version.

Linda made a barley, kale, white bean stew for dinner.  She has made it before and it is a wonderful blend of tastes and textures.  Besides the named ingredients, it included onions, garlic, mushrooms, and tomatoes.  For dessert she made apple crisp.  Apple cider and apple crisp in the same day; nothing says “fall” like apples.

Butch called to bring me up-to-date on their situation regarding the transfer of parts from their business in Indiana to the buyer in Nevada.  It looks like the 53′ trailer won’t be there to pick up material until the 29th of this month but I could take our bus there any time after the 18th, when their younger daughter (Brittani) is getting married.  And once our natural gas situation is resolved.  As of this writing we have no idea when they will run the line to our house and hang the meter.  The only date we have ever been given was project completion by September 26.

 

2014/07/25 (F) Assessing The Situation

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We finally got a letter yesterday from Consumer’s Energy requesting payment of the $200 fee for hanging the natural gas meter.  The letter included a rough drawing showing where the meter will be located (south end of the east side of the house where the propane currently enters).  It also shows the route the gas line will take to get there from the opposite side of the street.  The drawing did not correctly show our pull-through driveway in relation to the house, so the actual path will be different.  This was also the first indication we’ve had that the main line will be run down the opposite side of the street, which we prefer over running down our side of the street.

At 9:15 AM we still did not have any landscape workers on site so I went to my office to continue working on assessment items.  No one from Village Landscape Development showed up today and we never got a phone call.  It’s a way of doing business that I simply do not understand.

I finally got around to making my annual appointment with my dermatologist only to find out he is still on medical leave.  I didn’t know he was on medical leave in the first place.  They scheduled me with someone else in the same clinic.

After lunch I had a nice chat with our financial advisor / stock broker at Stifel-Nicholas even though we just saw him three weeks ago.  We got a post card a few days ago indicating that he and his assistant were moving to a different S-N office.  He had not mentioned this when we met in person so we wanted to see what the reason was for the move, which he gladly explained.  No cause for concern on our part, which left me free to worry about other things instead.

As long as I was making phone calls I called Butch to see how things were coming along following the sale of a large portion of their business assets to a company in Nevada.  They still have a lot of loose ends to tie up and a bus conversion to finish, so they are not sitting on their hands.  When the buyers were there a week ago they loaded up as many parts and as much material as they could transport in the vehicles they had, but by Butch’s estimate it wasn’t 20% of the total.

I also had a series of TXT messages with Joe Cannarozzi, the mobile mechanic who has taken care of our bus the last four years.  Joe is relocating from Chicago, Illinois to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and giving up the mobile aspect of his bus repair business.  Apparently his new place has a garage where he will continue to work on rigs, but they will have to come to him.  I hope that works out for him, but it leaves us having to find a mechanic closer to home or willing to travel here.

I finished writing the assessment items for the three remaining Michigan Assessment Consortium Common Assessment Development modules and got all seven sets of items e-mailed to the team.  With that task checked off, at least until I get some feedback, I was free to go to Lowe’s after dinner and pick up some of the materials I need for the HVAC projects in the garage.  There’s a better than even chance that we will not go to our ham radio club breakfast tomorrow in favor of an early start on the garage work.

 

2014/07/14 (M) Education

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Linda was up at 6 AM and was out the door and on her way to Twelve Mile, Indiana at 6:30 AM.  She decided last night not to have breakfast at home in favor of getting on the road.  I slept in and got up at 7:30 AM.  Lind’s homemade granola made for an easy, tasty breakfast.

Two landscapers showed up a little before 9:00 AM as I was getting ready to leave to run some errands and said Steve was on his way, so I stuck around until he got there.  We looked at a few things together and then I left.

On the way home from running my errands I got a call from TOMTEK reminding me that we have an annual service contract with them for the main house furnace (hot-water base-board heat) and air-conditioner.  I agreed to have them come on Thursday to service the A-C.  Perhaps while they are here they can figure out why it makes a noise that sounds like the thump, thump, thump of a helicopter blade.

About a mile from the house I spotted a small Painted Turtle trying to cross Hacker Rd.  A truck going the other way spotted it at the same time.  We both turned around and came back.  I got there first and put it on the front passenger floor mat after assuring the other driver that I was going to take it to our property and release it near the (neighbor’s) pond.  Turtles have very little chance of successfully crossing a road most places, including around here.

The two landscapers worked into the afternoon.  They could only go so far before needing Steve to inspect and approve their work.  He did not make it back today and I think they quit working around 3 PM.

Education is what I did professionally for the last 21 years before I retired, and I am still doing it to some small extent.  Back in the late winter I agreed to serve on a newly reconstituted FMCA national education committee.  There are 6 – 10 people on the committee, depending on how you count, and except for a couple of staff at FMCA headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio we are spread out all over the U. S.  Our meetings are, therefore, conducted by telephone conference with ideas and information shared via e-mail in-between.  I also set up a folder in our personal Dropbox as a place to put documents so the committee can retrieve them.

We had our third meeting today from 4:00 to 5:30 PM EDT.  I spent the rest of the evening creating an outline of a possible RV curriculum and dealing with e-mail related to our meeting.  Linda got home at 8:00 PM and we had leftovers for dinner, after which I returned to my work and she headed to bed.

I have one, maybe two, days to concentrate on desk tasks.  Once the Pack-Rat storage container arrives on Wednesday I will be tied up with house-related chores through the 19th and then company through the 23rd.  I expect delivery of some HVAC equipment and materials during that window.  With any luck Darryll will be here starting on the 24th and I will be tied up working with him through the end of the month.  I’m hopeful, if not optimistic, that the landscapers will also be done with their two projects by the end of the month.

 

20140713 (N) Pack-Rat

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Guilty as charged.  I am one of those guys who likes my stuff; it’s one of the main reasons we are not full-time RVers.  In order to get the garage and library ready for Darryll, and not trash the house in the process, we checked online for portable storage units.  We decided to order one from 1-800-Pack-Rat.  They were slightly less expensive than PODS, but the main factor was their ability to deliver a 16-foot long unit on Wednesday this coming week.  That will give us Thursday, Friday, and Saturday to clear enough stuff out of the garage to store the materials for Darryll and give him the space he needs to work.

Linda got a call from Butch at Service Motors to let her know they were back home from the Crosley Automobile Club national meet in Wauseon, Ohio and to see if she was available to come down tomorrow to finish up some critical accounting tasks related to the sale of most of their businesses assets.  The purchasers were in Wauseon for the rally and arrived at the business as I was chatting with Butch.  They plan to load all of the stuff they have bought into the five vehicles they brought with them and leave sometime on Tuesday, so Linda will be there mid-morning tomorrow and probably be home by 9:00 PM.  It will be a 15 hour day for her; 8 hours of driving and 7 hours of accounting, but she can/will do it.  I would normally go along, if for no other reason than to keep her company and share the driving, but I expect to have landscapers here tomorrow (and the rest of the week) and need to be here to interact with them.  Besides, there isn’t anything useful I can do at Service Motors at the moment so I would just be in the way and twiddling my thumbs.

We were both tired this morning and slept in a little later than normal.  That meant a later breakfast, which meant we skipped lunch and had an early dinner.  That, in turn allowed me to have dinner before going to our monthly Ham radio club meeting in South Lyon.

The morning overcast gave way to scattered clouds and blue skies on pleasant northwest winds, bringing cooler temperatures and lower humidity.  It was a perfect day for sitting on the (north facing) deck and doing sit down things, and that is exactly what we did.  Linda spent some time reading Veganomicon while I finished up a couple of blog post drafts and reviewed the SLAARC/WP website in advance of having to demonstrate it this evening for the ham radio club.  The site still needs work.  Some pages still need content, I found a few spelling errors, and I still need to resize photos so they take up less disk space and load faster.  The login feature is still working and the roster/database still displays correctly, if somewhat inelegantly.  But it’s functional enough to give the club members a preview and I will only demonstrate one photo gallery with a limited number of images so it shouldn’t be too sluggish.

By mid-afternoon it was warm enough that I decided to work in my office and get a few more blog posts uploaded to our WordPress site.  Linda made a “pasta e fagioli” recipe from Veganomicon and added some chopped dark leafy greens she had on hand.  She needed a dry white wine for the recipe and opened our bottle of Semi-Dry Riesling from Chateau Chantal, a gift from our daughter’s recent trip to the Traverse City area.  It was a little dry for my taste as a before dinner wine but paired very nicely with the meal.

I got to South Lyon just ahead of the 6:30 PM start of our South Lyon Area Amateur Radio Club (SLAARC) monthly meeting.  The business meeting was short.  We then had a lengthy presentation/discussion of our ARRL Field Day participation followed by a short preview of the new WordPress website.  It was generally well received and I got a few good suggestions during the discussion.

When I got home around 9 PM we had chocolate cake (vegan, of course) with raspberry sauce and relaxed for a while before turning in for the night.

 

2014/06/14 (S) Day 4 Rally Conclusion

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Each rally has a slightly different approach to food.  On the last full day of the GLAMARAMA they switch the breakfast carbohydrate delivery mechanism from donuts to pancakes and serve them with sausage links.  The coffee and tea are still there, of course, so we had coffee.  Other rallies, like the Escapades, have a “hitch up” breakfast on the day of departure, with coffee and donuts.  When Nick and Terry Russell were running their Gypsy Journal Gathering rallies they also had coffee and donuts on departure day as I recall.

In order to serve a lot of pancakes to a lot of people in a relatively short period of time GLAMARAMA hires a specialized food service.  The one they hired this year had long griddles with an overhead depositor that moved the length of the griddle like a gantry crane.  It would precisely deposit the batter to make a row of 5″ pancakes.  The operator would then move it by hand and deposit the next row, repeating this as they moved along the griddle.  Another worker followed behind the depositor with a pancake turner (flapjack flipper) and turned the pancakes when they were done on the first side.  Although hand labor was still involved it was an efficient, high volume, production process that did not require an army of volunteers.

When we were done drinking coffee and chatting Linda headed back to our motorcoach to prepare food for our family gathering on Sunday afternoon.  I headed over to the seminar building for a presentation by Jason and Nikki Wynn of Gone with the Wynn’s.  They were joined by Chris Dunphy and Cherie Ve Ard of Technomadia and did a panel discussion on earning income on the road.  They also covered work-camping and volunteering in exchange for a camp site.  They did an excellent job, relaxed and low key, and streamed the event live to the web.  The logins indicated that 68 people viewed the presentation online, which was probably more people than were in the room.

Geeks on Tour got their flash drives in (Nick and Terry Russell brought them down from Elkhart).  I wanted to restart our subscription, but wanted the flash drive instead of the CD as Linda needed it to store some files.  I ended up with both.  Their Tutorial Video series ( http://geeksontour.tv ) is an amazing resource for learning how to use a wide range of technologies for Planning, Preserving, and Sharing you RV adventures.

At 10:45 AM I met with Jerry Yates, Executive Director of FMCA, in my role as a member of the national education committee, to talk about RVillage.  It also gave me a chance to further explore making online education available to FMCA members, such as that provided by the Geeks On Tour, either directly from the FMCA website or through discounted subscriptions to provider websites.

Linda helped Alma Baker get situated for the Fleetwood hot dog lunch and had a tomato and onion sandwich while she was there.  I had a couple of tofu hot dogs in our coach and eventually headed over to a 1:30 PM seminar on 120 VAC by Gary Bunzer.  It was very good, as usual, but by Saturday afternoon seminar attendance had thinned.  This was a repeat of a session he had done on Wednesday, so many attendees who wanted to see probably already had.

Linda hung around the coach waiting for Butch and Fonda, who drove over from Twelve Mile, Indiana to work with her on some aspects of their pending business sale.  I came back to the rig to say hello and around 4:45 PM we gathered up some hummus, chips, and beverages and headed over to the 5:00 PM RVillage get-together.  The volunteer dinner started at 4:30 PM, but we decided not to go as we knew there would be little-to-nothing we would be able to eat.

Nikki Wynn had scheduled the RVillage get-together in the Dog and Cat Pavilion and we ended up with a nice turnout of 17 people.  It was not a pot luck, but enough folks brought munchies and extra beverages that everyone had something.  We milled around conversing in shifting groups and eventually formed chairs into a (sort of) circle.  Chris Guld suggested we go around and introduce ourselves and say where we were when we were 15 years old and whether we had any notion that we would find ourselves where we are now.  It turned out to be a fun, low key, way to get to know each other by filing in a few personal details.

We disbanded by 6:30 PM, went back to our coach for a few minutes, and then headed over to the final evening’s entertainment.  The Walker Family hails from Nashville and we saw them a few years ago at the G.L.A.S.S. rally in Berrien Springs, Michigan.  Dad, mom, and seven kids; four girls and three boys.  The “girls” are now young women; two are married and one just had her first child.  They perform as “The Redhead Express.”  The boys are now 15, 13, and 11.  The older two play drums for their sisters and perform as a trio with guitar backup from one of their sisters.  Mom and dad joined the sisters for a couple of numbers, but the entire family never performed together.  My recollection was that they had the last time we saw them, but that’s been at least four years, maybe five, and Linda disagrees with my memory.  Regardless, they are very talented and put on a spirited show of country songs with a bit of gospel and patriotic stuff mixed in; just what you would expect from a Nashville-based group.  They did not, however, use any pre-recorded sound tracks.

Following the concert there were drawings for prizes and the 50/50 raffle.  The Grand Prize was a gift certificate for an 11-day Adventure Tours Mega-Rally worth $3,000 (one motorhome with two people).  One of our GLCC members won $200 in the raffle.  Those of us “camped” in the GLCC area gathered by our rigs after the drawings and stood around talking until it cooled of to the point that everyone was ready to retreat into their rigs for the evening.

 

20140605 (R) Apple Roku

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Linda had to go into the bakery today which left me to catch up on phone calls and errands.  I made more phone calls to contractors this morning and had better luck than yesterday reaching people or at least leaving messages.  I rescheduled with Gary from GM Construction to come discuss the pole barn project.  I also got hold of Bratcher Electric and determined that the annual maintenance on the whole house generator could wait until we are ready to do the conversion from propane to natural gas, which they can handle.  In talking to Mike Bratcher I also determined that we can install a main panel in the garage just after the transfer switch and then run power directly from there to the pole barn rather than from the main panel in the basement.  While we are at it, we could redo the sub-panel in the garage, feeding it directly from the new main panel rather than the main panel in the basement.  The basement panel is very crowded and we have wires carrying electricity back and forth unnecessarily.

I got a call from Butch with an update on the negotiations of the sale of the major portion of their business assets.  Linda has been advising them relative to valuation, accounting, and tax issues and we have been helping them with purchase agreement language.  It looks like they are in the final stages leading up to a closing of the deal.  Their big annual event is coming up in early July and they will likely be busy with the transfer of inventory and training of the buyer during and after that event.  I need to get our bus down to their place to work on some projects and help Butch work on getting their bus conversion done enough that they can live in it this winter in the southwest.  Based on things going on at both ends, it looks like the window for that work will be mid-September to sometime in November, weather permitting.

Our converted coach friends, Pat and Vickie, have some older Motorola GMRS handheld radios that they like but the charger bases have disappeared.  My ham radio friend Scott (AC8IL) is in the commercial mobile communications business so I checked with him to see if chargers were still available.  They were and he had a couple of the drop-in style charger/bases in stock!  Scotty is just that kind of guy.  I picked them up this morning and will deliver them to Pat and Vickie at the GLAMARAMA rally.

Apple Roku sounds like an interesting dessert, but it’s not.  It might be an either/or situation, but it could be a both/and.  John Dewey was a both/and kind of guy, so I favor that approach.  We were intrigued by Steve and Karen’s Roku Internet TV streaming device last night so I stopped at Best Buy today on my way home from running my errand to see if they had them in stock and if so at what price.  Not only did they have them, they had three different models.  The “stick” was $50, the Roku 2 was $70, and the Roku 3 was $100.  (The Roku 3 does not have A/V connectors like the Roku 2, only HDMI, but it has a five times faster processor.)  But that was not all, oh no.  They also had the Apple TV device for $100 and two other similar products, one of which looked like an Amazon/Kindle thing and the other one a WD thing, whatever that is.

The Roku units (2 and 3) have access to a lot of content on a free, subscription, and pay-per-view basis.  The Apple TV unit has access to content on the same basis but the selection may not be as extensive; it’s hard to say for sure as the devices are not easy to compare directly.  The Apple TV unit, however, has one huge, unique feature; it can mirror anything on an iOS device, such as our iPads, to a TV/monitor.  The iPad can also be used as a control panel for the Apple TV device.

We do not have to choose between a Roku and an Apple TV unit, of course, we can get and use both if we want; it’s just a matter of money.  Between the two TVs in the house and the two in the bus it could be a lot of money if we wanted dedicated units of both types on all four TV/monitors.  We always have the option of moving things back and forth, but in general I prefer not to do that.  To the extent we can afford it I prefer to have the house and the bus set up so that the only things we move between them are the things we have to, such as ourselves, our food, our laundry, our computers, our cats, and some of our ham radio gear (at least for now).  The best solution, however, may be to get one of each device and move them around as needed.  That would give us the best cost/benefit ratio, but not the most convenience.

When Linda got home from her day at the bakery we finished the Egri Merlot we had opened the other night and caught up on the day’s events.  We decided to try the Apple TV device first and see how it worked in our situation.  Linda made an onion, mushroom, tomato Ragu, and served it over the leftover power grains.  It was very tasty.  After dinner I went to Best Buy to get the Apple TV device while Linda prepared fresh strawberries for dessert.  Fresh strawberries are a favorite treat of ours.  She served them with small pieces of Dandelion Small Batch Chocolate made from 70% Ambanja Madagascar 2013 Harvest beans.  The chocolate was excellent and unique.  It was a thank you gift from our son and daughter-in-law for Linda’s babysitting services while they were in San Francisco, California.

We connected the Apple TV box to one of our HD TV/monitors and went through the setup procedure.  We decided to test it on some PBS content, which required us to set up an account with PBS and enter a validation code that the Apple TV box provided.  We also downloaded an app onto Linda’s iPad2 that allowed it to mirror whatever was on its screen to the Apple TV.

We used the mirroring feature to watch Season 1, Episode 5 of Doc Martin, but it proved to be unusable.  The image was fine on the iPad2 but the Apple TV could not keep up.  I found that to be odd as our home WiFi network should have more than enough bandwidth to deliver the data stream between the devices, but maybe not.  I presumed that the limiting factor in our network was the data rate coming into our DSL gateway from our AT&T landline, but that was obviously fast enough to deliver the content from the gateway to the iPad without buffering hesitation.

We turned off the mirroring and finished watching the episode on the iPad.  Still, the content delivered directly from the gateway to the Apple TV looked great, and the mirroring will be useful for showing photos and anything else on our iPads.  We may reconfigure the Apple TV to use one of our other wireless networks and see if that helps.

 

2013_09_16 (Mon) Home Away From Home

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Buses at Service Motors in Twelve Mile, Indiana.

Buses at Service Motors in Twelve Mile, Indiana.

Service Motors in Twelve Mile, Indiana has become something of a home away from home for our motorcoach, having spent quite a bit of time there since we bought it.  As I have mentioned previously, Butch is very handy and has lots of tools, including a machine shop where he can custom fabricate things if needed.  He has been very generous with his time, talent, and facilities, giving me a good place to work on our bus and helping me with it when I need it (which is most of the time).  We often stop there enroute to other places, especially rallies that Butch and Fonda are also attending.  Once again, we spent the day camped there.

Service Motors is Butch and Fonda Williams’ Crosley automobile parts business.  They are the only full-line parts supplier for these wonderful little cars, last made in the early 1950’s, and have an active customer base.  They rarely close their business, but decided they would for the week while we attended the FMCA GLAMARAMA13 rally in Goshen, Indiana.  (Butch and Fonda are basically the same ages as us and were married one day before we were.  They have run Service Motors for 20 years and would like to retire and move in to their 1989 MCI MC-9 NJT bus conversion, which they have done themselves from scratch.  The business and facility are for sale.)

Linda worked with Fonda on some accounting issues while Butch attended to various bus and business tasks.  I spent the day repairing a leaky fitting on the fuel return line from the Aqua-Hot to the fuel tank.  This fitting had been leaking since I installed it as part of the fuel polishing pump project.  It looked like a simple enough project, which meant it would take me most of the day; and so it did.

The fitting in question was on the lower end of a check valve (back flow preventer) at the back of a small compartment, which made access difficult.  (I mentioned this project in a blog post in early June 2013, and have an article about the Parker Fuel Polishing Module queued up to run in some future issue of Bus Conversions Magazine.)  The compartment was covered by a beauty panel with a door, so the actual access opening was even smaller.  “Luxury” motorcoaches often conceal functional systems behind “beauty” panels so that the bays look impressively sleek and shiny when the doors are opened.  What I see, however, is something that blocks my access to systems that I need to work on so I decided to remove the panel, permanently.  This is why simply projects take all day.

The panel was held in place by four “L” brackets concealed on the inside (of course).  I borrowed an angle drive from Butch which allowed me to remove the screws fairly easily.  However, when I installed the electrical feed and switch for the fuel polishing pump back in June, I drilled a hole through this panel, ran a wire through it to the pump, and mounted the switch on the outside of it.  I dismounted the switch and removed the ring terminal from one of the wires as it would not fit through the hole otherwise.  With the switch and wires out of the way I was able to remove the panel after cutting loose some old rubber caulk along the bottom edge.  This is why simple projects take all day.

The “compartment” in question is just the extra bay space at the business end of the Aqua-Hot.  In addition to the fuel polishing pump it houses the coolant expansion reservoir and fuel filter / water separator for the Aqua-Hot as well as the fresh water pump for the domestic water system.  Fortunately the cover on that end of the Aqua-Hot slides off easily after removing only three easily accessible screws (it happens occasionally).  This made access to the leaky fitting much better.

The fitting was NPT male on one end, for threading into the bottom of the check valve, and barbed on the other end for attaching the fuel return line from the Aqua-Hot.  Barbed fittings are designed for a one time, press on installation of a rubber line, i.e., once the line is pushed on it does not leak and it does not pull off.  To remove it I had to cut it just below the fitting.  I was then able to unscrew the fitting from the check valve.  I was fairly certain that this junction was the major source of the leak.  The threads still showed remnants of Teflon thread tape, but not much.

The other potential leakage point was the seal between the two halves of the check valve itself.  The check valve is a two-piece body with internal parts, and there is a gasket between the two pieces of the body.  I had inadvertently loosened this joint when installing the fuel polishing pump and had not been able to re-tighten it in place because of the limited access.  Although I had a spare check valve, I decided to try and tighten the one that was already installed as replacing it meant cutting additional tubing and un-threading/re-threading additional joints.

Butch’s brother John came over in the morning to help Butch (and me) with anything that needed to be done.  Butch had him change out the element on his main engine fuel filter / water separator while he worked on other bus and business issues.  Fonda split her time between business things and loading their stuff on their bus.  Even when they are closed, there is business to attend to.  By the time I finished my little project it was well into the afternoon.  Butch and Fonda worked a while longer and then we headed off to Rochester for dinner at Alejandra’s Mexican-American restaurant.  It was 9 PM by the time we got back to the coach and we headed off to bed.

 

2013_09_15 (Sun) A Re-tired Travel Day

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We were up early today anticipating our departure, but also still having some things to do before we pulled out.  I switched the outside faucets to provide treated water (filtered and softened) and 125 gallons of fresh water on board.  I also checked and adjusted all of the tire pressures on the bus and the car while Linda finished loading food, coats, and toiletries.  In the past we have pulled the bus into the street and then hooked up the car for towing.  With the new pull-through driveway finally working as intended, we decided to hook the car up before pulling out.  This allowed us to do our light check before bringing the cats out and starting the engine.  (The cats do not like it when the engine is running or the coach is moving, so we wait as long as possible to put them on board.)

Ready or not, you reach a point where it’s time to go.  We’ve done this enough that we now accept that we will forget something and hope it is something small that we can do without or easily replace on the road.  The cats do not fall into that category, of course, so we put them on board, started the engine, and pulled out around 10:40 AM.  The driveway worked as planned and the bus made it out with the car attached with plenty of clearance.

We headed out our street to Hacker Road and headed south to pick up I-96 westbound from Grand River Avenue in Brighton.  (We would normally take M-59 westbound to I-96 westbound, but M-59 is under construction and traffic flow is not good.)  The trip to Twelve Mile, Indiana is about 250 miles and normally takes us about 5 hours including a stop for fuel somewhere along the way.  We decided to stop at the Mobil truck stop at M-52 and I-96, only 22 miles up the road, to top off the tank.  This ensured we would have more than enough fuel for the round trip and also operate our Aqua-Hot hydronic heating system and/or our genset if needed.

The weather was overcast with occasional light rain, but made for good traveling.  We prefer driving on partly cloudy days as it is easier on the eyes.  Being Sunday morning, traffic was light, which also made for good travel.  Sunday morning is a preferred travel time when we can do it, especially if we have to go through a major metropolitan area.  The drive was uneventful and we arrived in Twelve Mile around 3:45 PM.  We got the car unhooked and backed into our space next to Butch and Fonda Williams’ MCI MC-9 NJT bus conversion.  (NJT stands for New Jersey Transit.  These buses have a special front cap with a destination sign above the windshields.  They were specially built for the New Jersey Transit Authority and used as commuter coaches throughout the state.)  Butch and Fonda have a large paved area where they keep their bus with room for two more if needed.  A year or so ago I helped Butch wire up a pair of “50 Amp” RV electrical outlet boxes, so we have a nice electrical service when we are there.

Fonda returned home with Bell as we were arriving, and Butch returned from a gun show not long after while we were still setting up.  Butch and Fonda understand RVing etiquette, and left us along until we had “made camp.”  As soon as we were parked and the engine was off the cats reappeared from their travel spot under the passenger seat and were up looking out the windows.  They don’t seem to mind living in the RV, they just don’t like it when we move it around.

Linda and I had not met Bell before and the three women sat and visited while Butch and I did the same.  Bell went to fetch Bill and we met up with them for dinner at the Hibachi Grill Chinese buffet in Logansport.  It sounds like it was an easy enough day, but by 9 PM we were tired.  I was reminded that retired means re-tired, as in, “I was tired, and now I’m tired again.”  But it’s a good kind of tired; different from that associated with working a full-time, stressful job.